MELISSA BLOCK, host: Now, a letter, an update and a clarification.
First, to clarify. We cited a study yesterday in a story about the lack of town hall meetings in congressional districts across the country. The study said that 60 percent of House members did not schedule town hall meetings during the August recess.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host: Well, the organization that gave us that number, No Labels, has revised it after being contacted by several congressional offices. No Labels now says the correct percentage of House members not holding town hall meetings is a bit lower, 56 percent.
BLOCK: Now, the update. Yesterday, I spoke with Leslie Lanier and her husband, Beaver Tillett. She owns a bookstore on Ocracoke Island, on North Carolina's Outer Banks. He is a fisherman. And despite evacuation orders, both were planning to stay put and ride out Hurricane Irene with their children.
Well, we checked back in with the family today and found that Leslie and her sons have, in fact, evacuated. They left on the last ferry this morning. Her husband, however, is staying behind to look after the boats and the house.
SIEGEL: Finally, many of you felt that I was sloppy with my grammar yesterday when speaking of more than one attorney general. I was talking with a reporter about the removal of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman from a committee negotiating a settlement with banks over fraudulent mortgage foreclosure practices - and I misplaced the S.
BLOCK: Attorneys general, dang it, writes Jerrod MacLachlan(ph) of Seattle. I am not going to insist on stadia as the plural form of stadium. However, the position of attorney general should not be confused by the use of the apparently now-popular attorney generals pluralization. And he continues, the interviewee was free to use her own language, but I would've hoped that Mr. Siegel would have hued to the traditional and clearer pluralization.
SIEGEL: OK, I should have said attorneys general. I started out that way, and then succumbed to peer pressure from the reporter.
BLOCK: Peer pressure? Robert...
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SIEGEL: But I have a defense. I have a defense. Law professor and former Maine Attorney General James Tierney runs the National State Attorneys General Program at Columbia.
JAMES TIERNEY: At Columbia Law School, we are grammatically correct. But attorneys general is just silly. It's not how people talk. I just took an informal poll here in Lisbon Falls, where I live, and it's unanimous: attorney generals.
BLOCK: So that's the Tierney defense?
SIEGEL: Mm-hmm.
BLOCK: What do they do with mothers-in-law, Robert?
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: That's what I want to know.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: We enjoy your comments. Please send them to us through NPR.org. Click on Contact Us. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
